Digitally enhancing and automating business processes can feel a bit overwhelming at first. You might not be sure where to start and how. In addition - like in all development initiatives - the change in how people work is often bigger than learning how to use new tools. Luckily there are a lot of companies offering their support in how to rearrange your processes and manage change, though it might not necessarily be easy to find a partner that is a good fit for you. I know this being a process development consultant myself for nearly 7 years.

We at 3XO have decided to work with a software product called PACE when it comes to digitalizing customer work processes. By this I mean everything from customer engagement, risk management, anti-money-laundering (KYC) and occupational healthcare. All these processes have in common that you need to involve the end customer efficiently, while you at the same time have the opportunity to create a value generating experience.

From a software, architectural or technological side there are a few primary reasons why we have chosen to work with PACE. First of all, it is a module based platform solution. This means that everything doesn’t need to be coded from scratch every time we start working with a new customer. This saves a lot of time at the beginning of a new project as, for example, we can have the customer specific platform instance up and running in a day. We are also able to give the customer a look and feel of the future solution already before any contract is signed.

Thing number two is that Rohea - the technology company behind PACE – is continuously building new modules that represent different parts of the customer process. This basically means, that instead of having a software project, we can start in most cases with an approximately 80% ready solution. This puts the focus into what actually should be done both with the customers and internally, during the different steps of the customer interaction process.

Moreover, this approach ensures that the software will not become stale after the launch, i.e. it’s built to be future-proof. Chosen features and modules will keep getting updates, and new modules and features can smoothly be suggested and considered. This does not mean a software development project for our customers as they pay a monthly fee based on the scope of use. We have noticed that it makes things easier when you don’t need to fit every small development request into a new budget. Our customers get easily predictable costs and they don’t need to encounter unwanted economical risks when it comes to software development or implementation costs.

Thing number three is that you can choose to digitalize as much as possible of your processes in the long run, but still start with a small step, even with only one module, that solves the most critical problem or need you have. In essence, you don’t need to know all the ins and out at the beginning, but you can work your way forward as it fits you the best. From an investment perspective, it means, that you can start small, and commit more resources along the development path when you have already started to see the results in the form of new income or savings in operative costs.

The platform works both as a tool for the different stages of your customer interaction process and as a dashboard for all the relevant information. PACE can be integrated to, for example, CRM and other systems that contain customer data. This way information can all be brought together into one place for the person working with the customer and radically reduce the number of systems that are in daily use. This makes it both less frustrating and less time consuming to look for relevant information in different places.

The big thing from an investment perspective is that PACE allows you to start from the frontlines of your business. You can start making customer impact and increasing revenue by using the software much faster than if you would start from your core systems.

All the things above make sense to me as a business decision maker. Nevertheless, the actual reason why I personally got interested in PACE, is the great user feedback.

Outside work I am used to user friendly software, which is something I cannot say about many of the systems I have used in my working life. I almost didn’t believe, that there is software that makes end-to-end execution of a core business process likable. It is rare to get profoundly positive feedback, when you are working with B2B software systems, so it is even more rewarding to hear users say PACE is the best system they have used during their working career.

If you want to read more about PACE and the results our customers have achieved, you can check PACE’s webpage and a description of mutual insurance company Fennia’s case. They have by today achieved a 60% higher hit-rate for proposals, increased deal-size by 37% and product cover by 30%. You ask how? The answer is by saving 25 000 hours from time consuming and demotivating tasks… and putting those hours into creating customer value and increasing sales activity. PACE has made this possible by automating and digitally enhancing their customer interaction processes, step by step.

PACE is an end-to-end tool, which means that it is likely more difficult to sell to our own customers compared to software that is designed for solving a small specific need or improving an isolated step of a process. Still, I wouldn’t feel confident selling a single solution for one problem knowing that you are causing possible future problems, when it comes to using many systems and combining the data from them to get a comprehensive understanding of each customer.

PACE is account based - not opportunity based - which makes it possible to have all the information available to everyone in the organization. There are already enough problems with dealing with the existing silos in many companies. We rather work towards breaking the silos, than digging new holes into the collective understanding of each customer. The best part is… PACE collects all activity data based on what you are doing. So, you don’t need to use time reporting what tasks you have done. You can focus on actually doing them.

We recommend PACE for our customers, because it makes digitalizing core processes manageable. You can have ambitious targets and still start small by solving the most pressing issues first. This is what PACE is about. We help our customers create more customer value for a smaller cost, thus succeeding better than their competition.